Converging Dialogues

Latest Episodes:

#311 - Shifting Grounds: Territory, Society, and Conflict: A Dialogue with Burak Kadercan Feb 26, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Burak Kadercan about territory and nation states. They define territory and nation states, discuss empire, healthy nationalism, and ethnic groups in territories. They also define borders and discuss Westphalia, mosaic and monolithic order, Ottoman empire, war and conflict, Russia and Ukraine conflict, and many more topics.

Burak Kadercan is Associate Professor of Strategy and Policy at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He has his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. He was an inaugural fellow at the Center for Strategic Studies, The Fletcher School, Tufts University. He was also a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Reading (UK) and Assistant Professor in International Relations and coordinator for the Master Program in International Security at Institut Barcelona D’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). He is also Senior Associate at the Center on Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups (CIWAG). His main interest are in territoriality, international security, and state-formation. He is the author of Shifting Grounds: The Social Origins of Territorial Conflict.

Website: http://www.burakadercan.com/

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#310 - Comparative Cognition: A Dialogue with Nicola Clayton Feb 23, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Nicola Clayton about cognition across many animals. They define cognition in humans and in animals, intelligence, using magic to understand cognition in animals, embodied mind in animals, and comparative cognition as a type of convergent evolution. They discuss difficulties in using human measures for evaluating animal cognition, New Caledonian crows and their intelligence, consciousness, the future of comparative cognition research, and many more topics.

Nicola Clayton is Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Clare College and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Her main interests areas are comparative cognition and the evolution and development of intelligence in non-verbal animals and pre-verbal children. She is currently President of the British Science Association Psychology Section. She is also in residence at Rambert Dance Company.

Website: https://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/people/nsc22%40cam.ac.uk

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#309 - Sex, Evolution, and the Female Animal: A Dialogue with Lucy Cooke Feb 21, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Lucy Cooke about the female animals across many species. They discuss why the female species were neglected in Darwin’s studies, binary model of sex, female choice in sexual selection and the social and sexual monogamy in birds and sexual coercion with ducks. They talk about hierarchies with males and females, female dominance in lemurs, menopause, female bonding, and many more topics.

Lucy Cooke is a Zoologist, broadcaster, filmmaker, and author. She has a Masters Degree in Zoology from New College-Oxford. She has been a regular guest on Radio 4 and presented on BBC, ITV, and National Geographic. She is the author of numerous books, including her most recent book, Bitch: On the Female of the Species.

Website: http://www.lucycooke.tv/

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#308 - The Five Million Year History of Humans: A Dialogue with Peter Bellwood Feb 19, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Peter Bellwood about the five million year history of humans. They discuss the genera and species of humans and the different types of humans that lived together at the same time, genes from early human species, and the four acts of human history. They talk about Hominins arising out of the Miocene, distinct features of Australopithecus, humans in the Pleistocene, Homo Erectus walking out of Africa, Homo Floresiensis, and Neanderthals. They discuss domestication and cultivation of plants and animals in the Holocene, rice and corn in the Fertile Crescent and in China, Maize in the Western Hemisphere, Anatolian hypothesis for languages, and many other topics.

Peter Bellwood is Emeritus Professor in archaeology at Australian National University. He has his PhD from Kings College-Cambridge. His research areas have focused on population migrations during prehistory eras and the spread of Austronesian languages. He is the author of numerous books, including his most recent book, The Five-Million-Year Odyssey: The Human Journey from Ape to Agriculture.

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#307 - Many Worlds in the Multiverse: A Dialogue with Paul Halpern Feb 16, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Paul Halpern about the multiverse. They discuss the cosmological multiverse and many worlds interpretation, impact of Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein for general relativity, gravitational waves, and quantum mechanics. They also talk about different dimensions, dark matter, dark energy, string theory, the multiverse in popular culture, and many more topics.

Paul Halpern is Professor of Physics at Saint Joseph’s University. He has a Bachelors, Masters, and PhD in physics. He was is the recipient of the 2002 Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1996 received a Fulbright Scholarship. He was also awarded Athenaeum Society Literary Award. He is the author of numerous books including the most recent book, The Allure of the Multiverse: Extra Dimensions, Other Worlds, and Parallel Universes.

Twitter: @phalpern

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#306 - Heidegger's Culmination of German Idealism: A Dialogue with Robert Pippin Feb 14, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Robert Pippin about Heidegger’s philosophy in connection with German idealism. They discuss Heidegger’s ideas on the culmination of Western philosophy with Hegel, Heidegger’s emphasis on Being, meaningfulness of being, and present-at-hand and ready-to hand. They talk about the impact of Husserl on Heidegger and their different ideas concerning worldhood. They discuss Heidegger’s ideas on standing presence, unveiling and concealment, imagination and intuition, and the juxtaposition of Heidegger’s Dasein with Hegel’s Geist. They talk about Schelling’s ideas on nature, Hegel’s conceptual ideas, Heidegger as the first post-Hegelian European philosopher, poetic thinking, and many more topics.

Robert B. Pippin is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the College at the University of Chicago. He has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and was twice an Alexander von Humboldt fellow. He is a winner of the Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award in the Humanities and was recently a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a member of the American Philosophical Society. He is also a member of the German National Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of several books and articles on German idealism and later German philosophy, including his most recent book, The Culmination: Heidegger, German Idealism, and the Fate of Philosophy.

Website: https://voices.uchicago.edu/rbp1/

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#305 - The Disillusionment of Suburbia: A Dialogue with Benjamin Herold Feb 12, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Benjamin Herold about the evolving state of suburbia. They discuss the fast development in Dallas suburbs, Black Americans in suburbs around Atlanta, Multiethnic heritage in Evanston, Illinois, potential multiple futures in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, and the founding families and long history of Compton. They talk about culture and history in each of these locations, centrality of schools in suburbia, cultural issues, covid-19 pandemic, the future of suburbia, and many more topics.

Benjamin Herold is a journalist and author who primarily has written on urban education. He has a Masters in urban education from Temple University. His work has been heavily featured in Education Week, PBS NewsHour, Huffington Post, NPR, and many other outlets. He is the author of the latest book, Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America’s Suburbs.

Website: https://www.benjaminherold.com/

Twitter: @benjaminbherold

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#304 - Failures of the Clinton Presidency: A Dialogue with Nelson Lichtenstein Feb 08, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Nelson Lichtenstein about the failures of the Clinton presidency. They discuss his collaboration with Judith Stein for the book, why Clinton focused on economic issues, Al From, Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), and the impact of Ross Perot on the 1992 Presidential election. They talk about important figures in Clinton’s economic team, failures of healthcare, economic negotiations with Japan and NAFTA. They also talk about the 1994 Crime Bill, repealing Glass-Steagall, legacy of the Clinton presidency, and many more topics.

Nelson Lichtenstein is Research Professor in the Department of History at University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB), where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy. He has his Bachelors from Dartmouth College and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations, the University of California, and from the Fulbright Commission and the Oregon Center for the Humanities. He has also been elected to the Society of American Historians and received the Sidney Hillman Foundation’s Sol Stetin Award for lifetime achievement in labor history. He is the author of numerous books including his most recent book (co-authored with Judith Stein), A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism.

Twitter: @nelsonlichtens1

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#303 - The Science of Mental Health: A Dialogue with Camilla Nord Feb 04, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Camilla Nord about the neuroscience of mental health. They define mental health and how the brain is central to mental health, measuring subjective vs. objective well-being, and chronic pain. They discuss depression, anhedonia, dopamine networks, behaviorism for motivation, and reward and valence. They talk about various emotional theories, gut microbiome, Bayesian brain and predictive processing, placebos, homeopathy, antidepressants, and many other topics.

Camilla Nord is a neuroscientist and Associate Professor and MRC Investigator at Cambridge University. She has a degree in physiology, psychology, and philosophy from Magdalen College-Oxford. She has her PhD from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience from University College, London. Her primary focus is on the physiology and neuroscience around mental health disorders. She is the author of the book, The Balanced Brain: The Science of Mental Health.

Twitter: @camillalnord

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#302 - Modeling Social Behavior: A Dialogue with Paul Smaldino Feb 01, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Paul Smaldino about agent-based models of social dynamics. They discuss why modeling in social sciences are important, quantitative and qualitative data, models and how we define them, and decomposition with complexity science. They also discuss modeling with multivariate questions, importance of theory, modeling with COVID19, modeling in politics, and many more topics.

Paul Smaldino is an Associate Professor of Cognitive & Information Sciences and faculty in the Quantitative and Systems Biology graduate program at UC Merced, where he is also affiliated with the Center for Analytic Political Engagement and the Center for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience. He is also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His primary interests are how behaviors emerge and evolve in response to social, cultural, and ecological pressures, as well as how those pressures can themselves evolve. He also has broad interests related to cultural evolution, cooperation, and complex systems. He is the author of the book, Modeling Social Behavior: Mathematical and Agent-Based Models of Social Dynamics and Cultural Evolution.

Website: https://smaldino.com/wp/

Twitter: @psmaldino

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